Takeover day 2021 saw Year 10s take over the roles of different staff members across DGS. From the site team to English teachers and even the Headteacher!

As Headteachers, our schedule included the following:

Firstly, at 8:20am we planned for the day and then went straight to a senior staff briefing in which we had to announce the notices and staff of the week nominees, which we found quite nerve-wracking!

We then supported Miss Davies on Senior Staff Duty, but it was a bit boring since no one had misbehaved!

After that, we met with Dr Hawes about safeguarding and the school’s Anti-Bullying policy. We had a really interesting conversation and were able to understand how staff work together to improve our wellbeing and their efforts to stop the cycle of bullying.

We also interviewed students about their experience of the Takeover challenge; here's what we found:

• Zoe and Chloe had taken over Miss Chalmers, who is an English teacher. They had found her role as a teacher difficult, but interesting and fun as they helped her plan a lesson.
• Lottie had taken over Mr Osborne in Drama and had learnt effective skills on how to improve her drama performances as well as learning how to control classes. She had enjoyed helping to lead a Year 8 drama class.
• Sarah and Maheen had taken over Kevin and Derek’s job as part of the site team and found that they have a really important role within school and have grown to really appreciate them.
• Sophie and Amelia took the role of a cleaner where they cleaned the toilets. 

Some of the key quotes from Year 10 were:

‘I’ve learnt the centre of mass’

‘It’s harder than you think’

‘Giving people detentions is fun’

‘Sue’s job is hard’

‘How to light candles’

‘Staff have more jobs than you might anticipate’

Overall, we have found the role of headteacher an enlightening experience, as we didn’t realise how much time and effort went into Miss Littler’s job every day, from SSD duty to arranging meetings about safeguarding. We had envisaged today’s jobs as being mainly desk work and emails.

We hope other students found today’s Take-over as exciting and motivating as we did and hope the skills, they learnt will help them in the future.

Imansa K, Paige L, Akhiya R
Miss Littler’s shadowers